


Difficulties Speaking

by Passions



Series: Value Beyond Measure [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Passions/pseuds/Passions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys Gold is good with women. His job depends on it. But Belle French somehow manages to make all of that practiced ability just vanish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Difficulties Speaking

Objectively, nothing about this situation made sense.

Rhys Gold was the richest man in Storybrooke, excepting perhaps his friend Jefferson Madden, and he hadn’t gained that position by being shy. He’d been a practicing corporate lawyer for twenty-one years, hardly a career path for the meek, before he had moved. When his estranged father had died two years ago Rhys had inherited ownership of most properties within the small Maine town of Storybrooke and his job as landlord and rent collector wouldn’t have benefited from timidity on his part any more than Madden Securities would have.

Rhys Gold was not a shy man. And yet somehow, around her, the words he’d always been able to depend on disappeared.

Her name was Belle French and she was the librarian for Storybrooke. She was petite and pretty, with silky chestnut curls and bright blue eyes, and she was the sweetest person Rhys had ever come upon other than his own son. And just like Baden her kindness was genuine - something Rhys didn’t find to be terribly common.

He was utterly infatuated with her.

Every month, when he made his rounds of the town for rent, he was glad that neither the Library nor her flat fell under his dominion. There was no way he’d be able to remain properly authoritative when he couldn’t even properly manage the barest bones of a conversation any time he went to borrow a book.

He didn’t understand how she could so completely unbalance him without even trying.

Adding to the absurdity of the whole thing was the fact that he should be good around women - he was good around women. He’d been married once before, even if that had ended badly and he’d become a single father at thirty-three. And on top of that he had this new … diversion - he refused to call it a job - that Jefferson had started, which had him dealing with women on a constant and intimate basis. To his surprise, and Jefferson’s, he was good at it.

A few months back, in January, soon after Rhys’ forty-eighth birthday, he’d been talking to Jefferson and the other man had mentioned the escort agency he was thinking of setting up. Rhys had brushed it off. Even from someone as eccentric as Madden it had sounded, well, mad. But Jefferson had been most insistent and somehow he’d managed to persuade Rhys to help him with it and to join as one of the available escorts.

Rhys still had no idea what stroke of whimsy had made him do it, but he found himself glad he had. His big house had felt almost unbearably empty since Bae had left for University the previous September and that only echoed the emptiness he found inside himself.

His lack of friends was entirely of his own making, he recognized that, but even he needed companionship. As an escort he received that, and his necessary focus on whatever woman he was with allowed him a reprieve from the constant swirling of his own thoughts.

But Belle. Around her the emptiness eased, the gaping pit of his loneliness filled to overflowing with the bright light that her smile and her laughter and the sparkle in her eyes brought with them.

And that, perhaps, was why he found it so hard to talk to her.

He might be able to bully and persuade huge corporations into taking his point of view, he might have the assurance and confidence needed to exert his control over this small town, and he might spend his evenings and weekends charming and pleasing the women who sought his company and paid handsomely for it.

But against the onslaught of absolute contentment that washed over him in Belle’s presence he was hopeless. He’d learned how to deal with being empty so well, he was no longer qualified to deal with the fullness she brought him.


End file.
